Skepchick: Sain’t Misbehavin’

Bostonist apologizes for that terrible headline and promises not to do that ever again. The Boston Globe breathlessly reports that a Marshfield man was miraculously healed by a Catholic cardinal who died 100 years ago, once again making the case that journalistic standards will not stand in the way of their printing a completely idiotic story. According to the article, local septuagenarian Jack Sullivan is helping drive a movement to convince the Vatican to make Cardinal John Henry Newman a saint, which requires that the 19th century corpse perform at least two miracles. Luckily, the first of those miracles has already occurred, and the Boston Globe has the undeniable proof! According the article, the order of events is this: Jack Sullivan has a bad back and is diagnosed with spinal stenosis (a narrowing of the spine that puts pressures on nerves, causing pain). He sees a TV program about Cardinal John Henry Newman in which an appeal is made for viewers to report any Newman-related miracles. He prays to Newman. He wakes up the next day feeling better. MIRACLE. Or . . . not? From the article: For Sullivan, who said he has remained pain-free since his prayers were answered . . . Had intrepid journalist Jenna Russell bothered to read the second page of her own article, she would be aware that this is misleading at best and complete bullshit at worst. She writes that after his prayer for help, Sullivan remained free of pain for eight months, but after his last class, the pain returned, he said. He had surgery at New England Baptist Hospital in Boston on Aug. 9, 2001. So instead of “man in serious pain prays for help and is healed,” the story is more like “man in serious pain

prays for help, feels better for awhile, then gets so much worse that surgery is required. THEN he’s healed.” According to the Mayo Clinic , spinal stenosis can affect people in a variety of ways, causing small amounts of discomfort or completely debilitating pain that requires surgery, and anything in between. It can be alleviated through exercise and massage, and “its signs and symptoms are often intermittent.” With that in mind, it’s not necessarily baffling that someone could feel a bit better for a few months before the condition worsens. Sullivan even says that when he prayed, he felt a sense of “exuberance,” which is just the kind of response a person’s brain can generate that can result in feeling physically better - a response that just doesn’t require the intervention of a dead man. Jenna Russell (and contributor Michael Paulson) don’t bother interviewing any members of the “panel of doctors” who Sullivan claims “found no medical explanation for what happened,” possibly because pesky facts might get in the way of a good story. Who are these doctors? What hospital do they represent? What exactly were their findings? None of it seems to matter to Russell, Paulson, or Sullivan, and chances are, they don’t matter much to the crack team of investigators the Vatican has dispatched to verify the miraculous nature of the recovery. Let’s hope that the ghost of John Henry Newman’s next miracle involves something a bit more blatant, like regrowing a detached limb or something. Image courtesy of Wikipedia , where you can learn that John Henry Newman was sexy in an older Paul Newman kind of way, but they weren’t related and also John Henry was maybe kind of gay!

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Skepchick: Sain’t Misbehavin’